Have you been here all your life?
Except when I was in the Navy. I traveled all over the North Atlantic: England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany. I went to some beautiful places. Other than that, I spent most of my time in the Navy at the base in Providence, Rhode Island.

When did you start working at GM R&D?
I started in the mail room in 1963. Then I went off to the Navy and returned in 1967, but I was assigned to the Polymers Department.

Did you like that better?
Yes, much better.

Has the work changed much over the years that you've been working on polymers?
Actually, much of it is the same. We're still making plastics, we're just doing it in different ways. We used to do a lot of mixing, milling, and molding. Now it's mixing - no milling - and molding. Plus we do a lot of testing.

The physical testing - how strong it is, how brittle - hasn't changed much since I started. The ASTM standards remain very similar, except perhaps for fire retardants.

We're using a lot more fiberglass than we ever did, which is my main focus. I'm also making urethane foam, which we're using as a filler for the fiberglass. We wrap the fiberglass around the foam and form plastic around that to make a part.

The possibilities seem never-ending ...
That's for sure. I think the field of Plastics is growing. There's more and more need for plastic parts and the strength is just going up and up.

Why is the strength increasing?
Fiberglass makes it much stronger. So do carbon fibers.

What was your contribution to the Composite Truck Box?
Most of my work was in molding. I did a lot of the molding at the start of the project, trying different ways to use plastic and get it out of the mold. Mold release was a major problem at the beginning: The plastic was sticking everywhere and we couldn't get a full part out. Finding a good mold release took us six months to a year.

Before you fill a mold, you have to wipe it all down with the mold release. At that time, we were using one of the silicone mold releases, but we found out that it couldn't be painted. So we went to a fluorocarbon spray mold release that could be painted.

What other challenges did you face?
Another problem was temperature during forming - trying to get the resin to flow through the glass preform in Structural Reaction Injection Molding (SRIM). Temperature is always critical; otherwise, the resin can cure before it flows all the way through the part. We needed to get the temperature correct, so that the resin could flow through the entire mold. Then we could turn the temperature up after it filled the glass to cure the plastic.

Are you particularly proud of the truck box?
It's one of the best things we've done that has gone into production, for certain. Many of our projects don't necessarily make it into production, but we still learn from them.

What are you working on now?
A composite door. One of our big concerns is trying to get a Class A surface - which is smooth - on a fiberglass part. That's really difficult.

It sounds difficult - what are you doing to get around the fibers?
The plastic shrinks differently than the incorporated glass fibers do, so the glass protrudes. We have to stop that, which we do with fillers. We hope that with the right fillers, they'll keep the glass fibers from settling on the surface of the composite.

You listed your most significant accomplishment as marriage and family. Why is that?
I'm very happy with both. My wife and I have six children all together. They've all left home, so we're on our second honeymoon. We really enjoy the grandchildren too.

What do you do when you're not working?
I love to play golf - in fact, I play in two leagues. But in Michigan, you can't golf all year, so in winter I bowl. I'm not into the cold-weather sports.

I also like to garden. I have a large lot with many trees, shrubs, and flowers. I enjoy it and the neighbors do too - I motivate them to work on their own yards.